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Path: utzoo!watmath!clyde!rutgers!ames!ptsfa!well!msudoc!umich!itivax!crlt!michael
From: michael@crlt.UUCP
Newsgroups: comp.lang.misc,comp.edu
Subject: Re: How to teach computers
Message-ID: <648@crlt.UUCP>
Date: Fri, 20-Feb-87 16:49:11 EST
Article-I.D.: crlt.648
Posted: Fri Feb 20 16:49:11 1987
Date-Received: Mon, 23-Feb-87 05:38:10 EST
References: <2030@batcomputer.tn.cornell.edu> <269@rabbit1.UUCP> <843@hoxna.UUCP>
Organization: CRLT , Ann Arbor, MI
Lines: 68
Summary: Once I was just a kid, but now I'm a >>Computer Programmer!!<<
Xref: watmath comp.lang.misc:269 comp.edu:102

[nybble, nybble, nybble...]

In article <843@hoxna.UUCP>, lou@hoxna.UUCP writes:
> In article <2980@gitpyr.gatech.EDU>, scott@gitpyr.gatech.EDU (Scott Holt) writes:
> > < Teach problem solving, analysis, etc. Then programming>
> 
> 	Yeah, well, the problem I have with this approach is that :
> A. It's no fun. []
> B.  I feel it's much harder to learn the theories, or at least 
> learn them well, just on paper. []

I must agree.  Hands-on is the way to go, and the sooner the better.
I'd say I learned the most about computer programming (in order of
decreasing amount learned):

 - From "Playing" with the machines.
 - From reading or disassembling other people's code.
 - From trade journals and conferences.
 - From formal classes.
 - From writing programs for work assignments.

(With classes and trade journals about even.)  This is not intended to
slam the formal courses - I got a lot of stuff I'd never have encountered
any other way there.  But it was the hands-on, fun stuff (much of which
I did before becoming eligible to >take< the classes) that really taught
me, and stuck with me.  It >IS<, however, intended to slam a now-mostly-
defunct (finally!) policy at the university I attended:  "No 'Frivolrous
Use' of the Computer!"

I'm leading edge of the Baby Boom, and had an advantage that many of my
generation didn't: some access to machines and resources.  I grew up in
and near Ann Arbor, and was able to sneak into University of Michigan
facilities while still in Junior High - auditing Galler's nighttime
lectures on MAD and MESS, using a keypunch and card-sorter to make
typewriter-picture QSL cards, sneaking access to an ASR35 and long-distance
line to Dartmouth and learning BASIC and TSAP by looking over shoulders
and reading online documentation.  I got a part-time job in an electronics
lab during high-school, and got to play with and old IBM vacuum tube machine
and patchboard-wired dynamic logic.  By the time I hit conventional courses
I knew more about programming than many of the teaching fellows, and used
to annoy counselors by answering questions that they couldn't (while waiting
for a chance to ask a toughie of my own).

I was transferred to my first official programming assignment because I was
the only guy in the lab that knew FORTRAN, and put in charge of a computer
when the Dartmouth environment emulator I wrote while waiting for my
machine-access time slots made me look like some kind of wizard.  These days
I make a fine living as a consultant despite having dropped out of college
short of a degree.  (In those ancient days it was still thought that
one needed a foreign language and a stack of humanities courses to program
computers.  After completing everything else, I had trouble with German,
decided to take it outside and place out of the class, and never got
around to returning.)

If I'd encountered computers first on a purley-academic level, in courses
that tought a great hunk of theory before letting the student touch a key,
I'd probably have stayed in Electrical Engineering or switched to Chemistry,
and be designing streetlight systems, remote sensing equipment, or new forms
of toxic waste.

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